Drift
May 25 2013


In the dark fortress of trees
at their densest,

with the correct exposure, perfect slope,

and the south-west wind

missed

a small protected pocket

and dropped its load.

Still snow,

in shirt-sleeve weather
in early May.

A glimpse of white
radiating cold,
as if I'd entered a narrow gorge
sun can never penetrate.
The drift, locked-in
to the rocky hollow,

trunks, thrusting-up
from its frozen hold,
dead branches
scattered on top.
A granular surface
where lost needles, dropped cones
emerge,
as fresh as extinct mammoths
trapped in Siberian ice.

A becalmed eddy
with the scent of spruce, damp and resinous

sitting in the heavy air
dense with cold.

Winter persists
here, in the forest,
like a little ice age
in a small forgotten glade.

Or could this possibly be
an ancient remnant
of the last great glacier,
that was once a mile thick
and seemed invincible?

Reduced to this,
fossilized snow
millennia old
no one noticed before
I stumbled off the trail,
saw the glint of white
felt my shoulders tighten
with a shiver of cold.